The present invention relates to an XY or XYZ positioner for use in a wide range of positioning applications, including fluid handling in the medical field.
A problem with most prior art XYZ mechanisms is that such mechanisms require either heavy rectilinear mechanisms and associated support structures or heavy variable arm length structures. Weight and bulk of the Z axis mechanism is often located at the end of a cantilevered arm, and its weight and bulk get multiplied back through the rest of the system because the other two axes of motion have to support the heavy Z axis mechanism. It would be desirable to reduce the weight of the Z axis mechanism so that the weight, size and complexity of the whole system can be reduced.
Also, most prior art XYZ systems are complete systems that can not be easily tailored and changed for systems of varying geometries. It would be desirable to be able to build an XYZ system out of components which mount individually and separately. Such a system can produce different geometries simply by altering the mounting distance between the components.
Further, in prior art XYZ systems, either the area around the target area is encumbered with mechanism, or a large area in back of the target area is encumbered with mechanism. It would be desirable to put all of the mechanism on one side of the four-sided XY perimeter and to have that mechanism take up only a relatively small space.